September 7, 2024 • 46 mins
Ever wondered how the concept of race emerged and its relationship with Christianity? In this episode Dr. H.C. Felder challenges the notion that Christianity is a "white man's religion" by exploring the origins of race and its alignment with biblical teachings. We uncover the man-made constructs of race developed in the 18th century to justify slavery, highlighting that Christianity has always been inclusive of all ethnicities. Our discussion extends to the Great Commission and the inclusive vision of humanity in the Book of Revelation, reinforcing Christianity’s inherent non-discriminatory nature. We also delve into the pivotal role of Christianity in the abolition of slavery, dismantling misconceptions and highlighting the faith’s foundational belief in the image of God in all humans. By grounding our beliefs in biblical truth, we recognize the inclusive and transformative nature of the Christian faith.
To connect with Dr. H.C. Felder
Email: hcfelder@givingananswer.org
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Faithfully Living, the Podcast where we
learn how to live for Christ inour daily lives.
I am Dwan, your host, and Iwould like to invite you on a
journey with me to explore andlearn how to be a faithful
follower of Christ.
Hey everyone, welcome toFaithfully Living, the podcast,
(00:27):
where we strive to encourage youto live for Christ faithfully
by offering guidance on how tostudy the Bible, how to
understand the Bible better andhow to remain faithful to
historic Christianity in acontemporary society.
Genesis 1.27 tells us.
So God created man in his ownimage.
In the image of God, he createdhim Male and female.
(00:51):
He created them.
So, you know, as a people inthis world, we are image bearers
of God.
It's important to understandhow much care God gave to
creating humans.
We are valuable.
We should treat each other withrespect and dignity.
Yet, you know, sin has led usto mistreat our fellow man.
(01:12):
And it's also important tounderstand how the world was put
together and how history helpedus to know how people lived and
moved.
And it's vital to understand,as a believer, what we believe
as Christians and why.
In this episode I talk with DrHC Felder about is Christianity
(01:36):
a white man's religion?
But before we get started, letme tell you a little bit about
Dr Felder.
Dr Felder is a former atheistand NASA software engineer.
After becoming a believer andbeing exposed to the truth of
Christianity, he has dedicatedhis life to sharing that truth
with others.
He has an undergrad degree incomputer science and a master's
(01:59):
and doctorate in apologeticsfrom Southern Evangelical
Seminary.
His articles published inscholarly journals on the topic
of racism and the Bible.
He is the author of the AfricanAmerican Guide to the Bible,
which details, with theinspiration of scripture, the
(02:21):
black presence in the Bible, thebible and racism and the unity
of man.
Dr felder founded the givenanswer ministry, which focuses
on providing evidence for thechristian faith.
Dr felder also speaks atchurches and various apologetic
conferences around the country.
He resides in charlotte, northcar, carolina, with his wife and
(02:45):
four children.
All right, let's dive into thisepisode.
Well, hi, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Well, thank you for inviting me to the show.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
Well, thank you for inviting me, so I'm excited to
talk about our topic.
Is Christianity, a white man'sreligion?
Speaker 2 (03:12):
But before we get into our topic, can you tell us
a little bit about yourself?
Okay, sure, I was actually bornin a Christian family, but I
didn't consider myself much of aChristian.
I more considered myself maybea theist, because I went to
church every Sunday.
I believed there was a God.
I didn't know anything abouthim, definitely didn't know
(03:33):
anything about Jesus.
But when I joined the Navy, myfirst duty station was the
Philippines, and the first day Iwalked off that base and saw
all the beautiful women and sawall the bars, I knew that belief
in God was going to conflictwith the way I wanted to live my
(03:56):
life.
So I made a decision, rightthen and there, to no longer
believe in God, because I didn'twant to be held accountable to
no one outside of me.
I didn't want nobody telling mewhat to do, when to do it and
who to do it with.
So I said I'm not going tobelieve in God, and God, you
know, turned me on with thedesires of my flesh.
And I lived that way for thewhole time I was in the Navy,
(04:21):
for sure, sure, and even after Igot out the Navy, but um, but
there were times, though I gottaadmit that I did struggle with
my atheism when I was in theNavy, and that would be when I
would go out to sea and I wouldsee God's creation, I would see
the stars at night and I wouldknow that just no man made that
(04:41):
Pookie didn't make that.
That had to be something waybeyond us.
Yeah, so I would come back toshore and I would just have to
like double up on my atheism inorder to reinforce it, because I
could not let God in, becauseGod would just mess up my plan,
my plan, the plan that I had formy life, and I hated Christians
(05:09):
.
I hated everything aboutChristians because they
represented God and I didn'twant anything to do with God,
and I would often belittleChristians, I would belittle
their faith, because I would saythat there's no, you know, you
believed in this fairy tale, god, and because I had to, I had to
reinforce it for myself.
But I did meet a young lady oncethat my uncle introduced me to,
(05:31):
and she was actually the firstChristian I ever met in my life
that talked the talk and walkedthe walk, and just being with
her gave me some insight intowhat it means to be a Christian,
and one day she took me tochurch.
She invited me to go to churchand I remember it clearly
because it was on a Friday nightand I'm like who goes to church
on a Friday night?
You go to happy hour on aFriday night.
(05:52):
And something happened to me.
The Holy Spirit just worked onme and it just rose up in me and
I fought it off and I wastelling her about it on the way
home and she was like that's theHoly Spirit calling you and I
was like I actually believed it.
For some bizarre reason, Ibelieved it and I actually gave
(06:12):
my my my heart to the Lord.
But afterwards, after theeuphoria wore off, I was like
what did I do?
You know, I just made someemotional decision to believe in
this fairy tale, god, and so Istarted doing research to find
out if Christianity was reallytrue.
And that's when I found all theevidence for Christianity.
(06:35):
And I found that there wasevidence that the Bible was true
, that God did exist, and thatthe God did exist, corresponding
to the God of the Bible, jesusdid rise from the dead.
There was plenty of evidencefor it.
And so I was so surprised bythe information that I actually
decided to give my life toChrist and to focus on sharing
(06:58):
that information with others,and at the time I was an
engineer.
I was a software engineer atNASA and I actually quit my job,
sold my house and moved toCharlotte to study apologetics
under Dr Norman Geisler, andI've been into apologetics ever
since.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
Well, that's an amazing story, how you started
off knowing what was true as faras God being authority, and you
knew that you didn't want thatauthority in your life.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
so I knew enough to know, yeah, and if it was a God,
I would be held accountable tohim.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
I knew, I knew that much and then once you, you know
, you saw, I guess, the light orsaw who Jesus was, you, you
know, you actively sought himout, which is, and then him, I
completely gave my life to him.
That's an amazing story.
Thank you for sharing that.
(07:50):
Alright, so to get into ourtopic.
You know it's not uncommon forpeople to label Christianity as
like quote unquote the whiteman's religion.
But it kind of goes back tohaving the right perspective on
race and ethnicity.
(08:11):
So let's kind of start off asfar as like.
Why is it important tounderstand ethnicity from a
biblical perspective?
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Well, because a lot of people when they look at the
Bible, they believe that theBible is a book written by white
people for white people.
They don't even see blackpeople in it, they don't even
see people of color in it.
So then a lot of peopledisassociate themselves from it
because they say, well, that hasnothing for me, because that's
(08:44):
about white people and it's forwhite people, when it's really
not true at all.
I mean, god looks at us as allthe sons and daughters of Adam
and Eve.
All ethnicity come from thosetwo people to people, and their
genes was every color and huethat we see.
(09:08):
So when God looks at humanity,god looks at people as the
descendants of Adam and Eve, andas they developed and became
more numerous and migrated, theybecame ethnic groups, they
became nations and that's howGod dealt with people.
He dealt with people by nations, and God doesn't deal with
(09:31):
Black people and white people.
Race is not a biblical concept.
There's no such thing as racein the Bible.
If you look at the Bible andyou start looking at race, then
you've already gone wrong,because there's no such concept.
This concept came later on, butthere's no such thing in the
Bible as a concept as race,there's ethnicities, there are
nations, and that's the way thatGod sees people.
(09:53):
And God sees us all as beingmade in the image of him.
And I think this is soimportant because if black
people think that God does notlike them or that God views them
as second class citizens,people cannot view themselves
higher than they think that Godviews them.
So it's important that peopleunderstand that God views us all
(10:17):
.
He makes us all different kindsof colors, like he makes the
flowers different kinds ofcolors, like he makes the birds
different kinds of colors.
There is beauty in thatdiversity and that's what God
sees.
He sees the diversity andbeauty in that diversity because
he created it so you mentionedrace.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
You know, you said race is not in the bible.
So where did race, the conceptof race, come from then?
Speaker 2 (10:42):
race is a man-made idea.
It is a man-made construct.
It goes, we can.
We can trace it back to someswedish guy named carlos lennox
and in 1758 he actually wrote abook and he actually classified
people by their characteristicsand he called that race.
(11:06):
But he went further.
I mean, he talked aboutpersonalities like you know,
blacks being lazy and beingshifty and being, you know,
untrustworthy and all those typeof things.
So he was the first one to sortof come up with the whole idea
of race.
And it was actually.
It was actually Darwin,actually built upon what this
(11:28):
guy had actually done and whathappened was is that the slave
owners used that as evidence oras a reason to enslave Black
people, to say that they wereinferior, that they needed white
people.
But it's important tounderstand that slavery came
(11:51):
first.
The justification by race camelater, because slavery existed
long before this guy wrote thisbook in 1758.
But race was invented as a wayto justify slavery.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
That's interesting.
I knew slavery has been aroundfor thousands and thousands of
years, but I guess I didn'trealize the concept of race was
used as like a justification.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
Well, actually, you know I can touch on that a
little bit more when the firstBlacks came to America, they
came as indentured slaves,indentured servants, and they
were in the fields rightalongside indentured slaves.
I mean indentured servants fromother places, from Europe.
Indentured slaves, I meanindentured servants from other
(12:47):
places from Europe.
So you have the Irish workingright next to the African, right
next to the German.
But what happened was there wasa thing called the Bacon
Rebellion.
In the Bacon Rebellion peoplerose up, the service rose up
against the landowners, andafter that then the landowners
decided that they need a way.
(13:08):
They need a way to be able tokeep a class subservient, and
they came up with that was oneof the reasons behind race.
And so the people who wereIrish and who were German, these
people weren't considered white.
So they sort of made thelandowners say if you help us
(13:29):
keep the black people down, wewill.
Whites were only landowners.
If you help us keep the blacksdown, then we will give you
basically whitehood.
And so that's basically howwhite and black came about.
They were both invented, theywere both created.
They're both social constructs.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
Like a man-made construct.
Clearly a man-made construct soI guess for the for the next
few questions in light of that.
You know people have made suchclaims as like christianity's
races, does christianity supportum slavery?
(14:12):
Was christianity brought umover by to af Africa by white
missionaries?
So let's address each of thosequestions there.
So let's start off with isChristianity racist?
Speaker 2 (14:27):
No, I go back to saying you know Adam and Eve.
We all come from Adam and Eveand we are made in the same
image of God as Adam and Evewere.
Christianity was not racistwhen it was founded.
It's not racist today.
Pentecost when the church wasfounded, if you look in the
(14:50):
Bible you see that there werepeople from every nation, pretty
much well under the sun.
At Pentecost, that's when thechurch started 3,000 people from
every nation under the sun.
There were people there fromAfrica.
So the first converts, thefirst converts to Christianity,
the first church consisted ofAfricans.
So there were Africans andpeople of color from day one.
(15:12):
So we start there.
But another thing the firstGentile convert to Christianity
was the Ethiopian eunuch.
Right, yeah, god went out ofhis way to perform a miracle To
bring the Ethiopian eunuch intoknowledge about Christ.
(15:33):
Eunuch into knowledge aboutChrist.
That Ethiopian eunuch went backto Africa and told his queen,
candace, and Africa spread andChristianity spread throughout
Africa.
But not only that.
Let's look at what Jesus saidwhen Jesus was given the.
(15:55):
What is that called Matthew 28.
The commission, the greatcommission.
He said go into all the nations,make disciples of all nations.
He didn't say the white nations, he didn't say the black
nations.
(16:15):
He said all the nations and weknow that they did this Because
Christianity spread over theblack nations.
He said all the nations and weknow that they did this because
Christianity spread over thewhole world.
But then when we look at Johnthe Revelator, when he has a
picture of heaven, when he'slooking at heaven, he's seeing
people singing to the Lamb.
He's seeing people singing toGod, singing to Christ, and they
are people from every nation,language, tribe and tongue.
(16:39):
They are all there in heaven.
So it was never racist.
There are more Christians inAfrica today than there are in
the US, so it would be verydifficult to go to Africa and
try to convince them thatChristianity is racist when
there are more Christians there.
(17:01):
So it has never been a whiteman's religion.
It's never been racist.
That is.
I think.
What happens is that peoplehave this tunnel vision and
people.
I look at people, for instance,like Malcolm X and Elijah
Muhammad, and they looked atpeople who they saw, who were
(17:22):
their oppressors and they were.
They happened to be white andhappened to be Christian.
So they had this few view thatChristians and white equaled the
same thing.
But they had a very narrow viewof the world.
They had a very they had a verynarrow understanding.
They they relegated it to theirown personal experience, where
the world is a lot bigger thantheir personal experience right?
Speaker 1 (17:45):
yeah, definitely so.
I.
I think it's important to, likeyou said, have a wider
perspective than just your own.
Just your own narrow you.
You can't classify people intoone category if you don't know
the broader scope of who peopleare and what the Bible says
(18:06):
about.
Like you said, nations andethnicity, yeah, so I guess that
kind of transitions to doesChristianity support slavery?
Speaker 2 (18:21):
to?
Does the?
Does christianity supportslavery?
Now, this is always a hotbutton, a hot button issue.
Um, yeah, there's slavery inthe old testament, definitely
slavery in the old testament.
But before the old testamentthere was slavery.
Slavery had always existed.
Slavery existed before the Jews.
Slavery has existed in everysociety.
Slavery is all about a strongernation enslaving a weaker
(18:46):
nation.
In the Bible we see slavery.
We see slavery in the OldTestament.
But when we look at the OldTestament we see that God did
put boundaries around slavery,Like, for instance, after every
six or seven years they had tobe left free.
A lot of it had to do withpeople who were destitute, who
(19:10):
would actually sell themselvesinto slavery.
But there was actually slaveryalso where it was perpetual,
where God put a nation intoslavery as punishment.
When the children of Israelwent into the promised land, the
land of the Canaanites, Godsaid go to a city.
(19:33):
If they subject themselves toyou, then they become your
slaves.
If not, then destroy them,Because God was punishing those
nations.
But this has nothing to do withrace.
For some reason, people look atrace and say this has nothing
to do with race.
It has nothing to do with race.
There's this idea that the Jewswere white and everybody else
was black, and that's justsimply.
That's just simply not the case, because we see that the Jews
(19:55):
themselves went into slavery inBabylon.
And an interesting note Babylon, the descendants of Babylon,
come from Cush, which is thefounder of the African nations.
They also went into slavery inAssyria.
So it wasn't.
It had nothing, absolutelynothing to do with race.
(20:16):
But let me say this, and thisis going to sound really, really
weird Slavery was not even seenas a problem until Christianity
came along.
Slavery had always existed.
It existed in the Americasbefore the white man came.
(20:37):
Before the white man came,Native nations were enslaving
Native nations.
It happened everywhere InAfrica.
There's this idea that thesewhite people went to Africa and
that they captured these slaves,like we see on Roots, which was
completely false.
(20:58):
The fact of the matter is theAfricans were taking Africans as
slaves and was selling them tothe white man.
Slavery existed a long time inAfrica before the white man came
.
The white man didn't teachslavery to the Africans.
The Africans knew slavery very,very well.
As a matter of fact, Africans,the Africans, knew slavery very,
(21:23):
very well.
As a matter of fact, when theEuropeans tried to outlaw
slavery.
They rebelled.
They were like why in the worldwould we do that?
This is our culture, this iswhat we do.
This is what we've always doneIn America.
We hear, of course we hearabout the whites taking Africans
as slaves.
We don't hear about the factthat Native Americans had Black
(21:43):
slaves.
You ever heard of the Trail ofTears?
Speaker 1 (21:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
The Trail of Tears is when they relocated Native
Americans from one part of thecountry to another.
What they do not tell you isthat when they relocated these
Native Americans, they tooktheir slaves along with them.
Native Americans had slaves,just like the white people had
slaves.
Not only that, africans hadslaves as well.
(22:14):
In America there were Africanlandholders who had slaves.
As a matter of fact, Imentioned before about
indentured slavery.
The first example of perpetualslavery was a Black man going to
court to enslave his Blackslaves perpetually.
(22:36):
And then it was a Black man andhis slaves.
Then, once that happened, itopened up the floodgates and
then slavery became perpetual.
It wasn't seven years anymore,it became, you know,
never-ending.
So yes, slavery had alwaysexisted, but it's only one
(22:57):
culture where slavery was dealtwith and was made to be wrong,
and that is the Christianworldview.
That's about an abolitionistmovement.
The abolitionist movement tookhold of the idea that man is
(23:20):
made in the image of God andbecause of that idea the
abolitionist movement started.
And it's because of that idea,it is because of that movement
that we know that slavery iswrong, that slavery around the
world pretty much will stopbecause of that.
(23:40):
So not only did Christianitynot endorse slavery.
Christianity is responsible forthe abolition of slavery.
When we look at slavery aroundthe world, slavery only exists
in small pockets right now andthose are in Muslim nations.
Christianity pretty much wellwiped out slavery worldwide.
(24:04):
So, no, christianity does notsupport slavery.
Christianity was responsiblefor the abolition of slavery.
And when people say that slaveryis wrong, whether they know it
or not, they are borrowing froma Christian worldview, because
before that Christian worldview,before the abolitionist
movement, no one thought slaverywas wrong.
(24:26):
There was no reason to thinkslavery was wrong.
Atheists can't give you areason why slavery is wrong,
because we're not made in theimage of God, because you know
morality is, because you knowit's morality is whatever you
want it to be.
Islam cannot give you a realreason for why slavery is wrong.
Which is why when they tried,when the, when the British tried
(24:47):
to force other nations to giveup slavery and they went to the
Muslim, the Ottoman Empire, theyrebelled.
They were like what do you mean?
Slavery is wrong?
It's like them, like many otherpeople, like our culture is
built on slavery.
That is why there are certainpockets of slavery right now and
those pockets are run byMuslims and enslavering
(25:08):
Christians.
So the idea that Christianitysupports slavery is completely
backwards.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
It's all interesting that you're talking about, you
know, having to know, like, thehistory of how things got
started, yeah, which is totallyopposite of what the narrative
that we have.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
It is completely opposite of the narrative we
have.
Completely opposite of thenarrative.
And you know I'll give you anexample of that, and you know,
I'll give you an example of that.
So when I was growing up andwhen I was in high school, roots
came out and I saw Roots and itmade me angry, especially the
(25:52):
part where Kunta Kinte wascaptured by these white men that
just incest me.
Matter of fact, I was in the DCat the time and there were race
fights breaking out because ofthat, but now we know that it
was a lie Right.
(26:12):
First of all, roots was a bookthat was plagiarized by alex
haley.
He plagiarized a work offiction written by a white guy
oh, I didn't know that part yes,written by a white guy.
And alex haley admitted.
(26:33):
He said well, I was just tryingto give us you, give us morals
to live by.
He admitted that he plagiarizedit.
But not only that.
The Mendingo warriors that wehear all about in the Book of
Fruits actually were some of theworst slave traders in Africa.
They would go into CentralAfrica, captured slaves.
(26:59):
They were the ones thatcaptured the slaves and brought
them back to the coast and thensold them to the white people
who came were looking to buyslaves.
So the fact of the matter isthis is the opposite.
They were the actual slavers.
They weren't the victims ofslavery.
They probably were victims ofslavery too, because everybody
was a victim of slavery.
Right, whichever tribe wasstronger enslaved the weaker
tribe.
(27:19):
So it was going on back andforth.
And that's why, when I look, Iwent and did my ancestry and I
saw that I had, you know,relations all over Africa,
central Africa, the coast ofAfrica because they went into
Central Africa, took the slavesand brought them to the coast.
So, yeah, yeah, we have.
(27:42):
We've been told a lot.
That's not true.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
Well, I guess kind of segwaying piggyback on that.
Our last question would be wasChristianity really brought to
Africa by white missionaries?
And you kind of touched on thata little bit.
So tell us the history of you,told us a little bit of how
Christianity got into Africa,but could you elaborate on that
a little bit more?
Speaker 2 (28:05):
Yeah, I mentioned the Ethiopian eunuch who came back
to Ethiopia.
In the Bible Ethiopia is calledKush and that actually reflects
modern day Sudan, ethiopia,southern Egypt, the places where
(28:26):
the dark people are.
He came back to his queen.
She accepted Christianity andChristianity, flourished and, as
an interesting fact, ethiopiahas been Christian ever since.
Ethiopia is Christian to since,oh, ethiopia is Christian to
this very day.
But not only that.
(28:47):
Ethiopia was one of the fewplaces that were Christianized
without any influence from Rome.
They were Christian before theRoman Empire accepted
Christianity.
So Christianity continued tospread throughout Africa.
(29:11):
At the end of the third century,Northwest Africa was majority
Christian, northwest Africa wasmajority Christian.
By the third century, thatmeans the 200s, and by 200, like
280, there were churches inAfrica.
Now the Akosumite kingdom,which came from Ethiopia, which
(29:32):
came from Kush they just changednames over time became the
first Lubian kingdom to adoptChristianity as the official
religion in the fourth century.
This is the 300s.
Oh wow.
This is long before America wasdiscovered, early on, very
early on.
The African kingdoms of NabatiI can't pronounce some of these
(29:57):
names, but there were a numberof African nations that became
Christian around this same time.
Christianity was present all upand down the Nile River during
the 5th, 6th and 7th centuries,and they were Christians without
interruption until the Arabconquest Now, and this included
(30:17):
places like present-day Uganda,kenya.
All these places wereChristians until the Arab
conquest Now, when the Arabconquest came along, then some
of these places became Muslim,some of it through conquering,
some of it through just regulartrade.
(30:38):
And some of these nations didrevert back to their previous
religions or they adopted Islam.
And then, around the 1400s,there was another wave of
missionaries that did come fromEurope.
But what is interesting is thatthis wave of missionaries that
(31:02):
went there, they were basicallybringing the same Christianity,
because in Africa, africansactually exported Christianity
to Europe.
When the persecutions happened,a lot of the African Christians
went to Europe.
(31:23):
So that's how a lot of Europebecame Christianized.
And when Rome becameChristianized, they needed
scholars, they needed people whoknew Christianity, and they
would go to some of these placesin Africa Because Christianity
had been firmly established inAfrica.
(31:43):
So when these missionaries cameback to Africa, it was with the
same Christianity that theyoriginally exported to Europe in
the first place.
So it became sort of fullcircle.
So so originally, yes, africawas Christian before there was
(32:05):
even in America there was a law.
Then Christianity did come back.
But even when Christianity cameback, a lot of the nations did
evangelize other nations.
So Christianity spread withinAfrica, even from those
missionaries at that time theyactually spread it among other
(32:26):
nations.
So Christianity in Africa.
But at no point didChristianity disappear from
Africa, at no point.
There was always a Christianpresence in Africa, always a
Christian presence in Africa.
As I mentioned, ethiopian hasalways been Christian.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
Yeah, it's interesting how they got it
turned around.
Yeah, I think it was like yousaid it's a full circle.
It's a full circle.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
Some of the most famous theologians, christian
theologians, were African.
I mean, we look at Augustine,who was actually responsible for
Christianity as we know ittoday as far as doctrine.
I mean, when you go to seminary, a lot of the stuff that you
(33:19):
learn is built upon, uh, what,what augustine taught.
We look at athanasius, who was,uh, one of the early church
fathers.
I mean he was, he was, he waszealot, he was zealous for the
faith.
I mean, he was in some of thethe early church councils.
As a matter of fact, they havethe athanasius creed after him,
(33:39):
which he had implemented to orpretty much would develop, which
is today still used as a testfor orthodoxy in the Christian
church.
And we know he was African.
As a matter of fact, hisenemies used to call him the
black dwarf.
So, Africa and Christianity havea long, rich history together.
(34:04):
Unfortunately, when the RomanEmpire did take over, they did
start to influence Christianityin a way that you know it became
more.
We call it Hellenistic.
You know it became more.
(34:24):
What do we call it Hellenistic?
It lost a lot of its Africanroots, but Christianity in
Africa has gone way back, wayback to the very beginning.
Speaker 1 (34:36):
Yeah, Well, I'm glad you're correcting our
misinformation of history thatwe have learned and just kind of
segue into that.
You know how people getmisinformed and have a lot of
ideas that develop.
So what would be like somemisconceptions about
Christianity that, like blackpeople, the black community has
(35:01):
developed or had or has?
Speaker 2 (35:07):
Some of the things I've attested on already is that
Christianity is incompatiblewith people of color.
A few years ago, my wife for mybirthday.
We actually went on a trip toKenya and I was surprised when I
(35:30):
got to Kenya and saw all theChristians.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
And I asked our guide .
Speaker 2 (35:34):
I asked our tour guide I'm like what a couple of
all these churches is there aheavy Christian presence here?
He's like this is a Christiannation.
He says it's a mostly Christiannation and I did not realize
that and I started doing somemore research on it.
But there are more Christiansin Africa today than any other
(35:54):
continent.
We're talking about 630 millionChristians, which makes up 45%
of Africa, and 30 millionChristians, which makes up 45%
of Africa, and they'reestimating by 2050, it'll be 1.5
billion more than Latin Americaand Europe combined.
So these are some of themisconceptions that people have,
(36:17):
but another one is and this isa big one is that we have this
idea that these white slavetraders took Africans from their
native religion, brought themto America and forced them to
worship this Christian God.
The fact of the matter isremember I told you, a lot of
(36:40):
Africa was Christian.
A lot of those slaves who cameto Africa were already Christian
.
When they got to America, theywere already Christian.
In fact I will statistic here97,000 of the 388,000 slaves
(37:03):
that came to America came fromChristian nations in Africa.
That's 25%.
One in four slaves who came toAmerica from Africa came from a
Christian nation.
The Congo was big.
The Congo was big in the slavetrade.
But the Congo was also aChristian nation.
So this idea that they werestripped of their religion given
(37:28):
some foreign religion is justnot all the way accurate.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
I did not know that, that majority of slaves that
came over.
Speaker 2 (37:36):
Well, not the majority.
About a good number of themwere Christians.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
So what does the Bible tell us about how early
Christianity viewed ethnicidentity and diversity and you
touched on this a little bitabout?
We are all created in the imageof God, all created in the
image of God.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
Race is not a biblical concept.
The early Christian church wasvery diverse.
I mean, we read about it in thescriptures, we read it.
We could tell by some of thenames that they were very
ethnically diverse.
So there was no, there was,there was no black church or
white church.
The churches were very diverse.
Leadership in these churcheswere very diverse and there was
(38:25):
no such thing as an idea of racein the early church.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
There was ethnic identities, but it had nothing
to do with race understanding.
You know the historical contextof you know what the bible
tells us about christianity andhow it views who we are related
to god and then what this whathas history told us about how
christianity spread from africainto like europe and how it
(38:59):
started and those leaders thatwe look to.
Speaker 2 (39:04):
Like you said, augustus was one of the
prominent theologians that welook to as far as our Tertullian
was another one and he'sactually the one that coined the
phrase the Trinity he was anAfrican.
The first seminary was inAfrica.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
Oh, wow, I did not know that either.
You need to read my book, is it?
Is it important?
It's very important.
Yeah, I love history, but it'svery important to know, you know
, the history and origin ofthings.
Yeah, how things were, you know, passed on to to generation to
generation, and then you can seehow the misconceptions of
(39:45):
certain ideas developed, likeyou were talking about the I
forget what his name was thatcoined the concept of race.
Oh yeah, yeah.
Right.
And then Darwin picked up thatin his Origin of Species.
Speaker 2 (40:05):
Now, now, most people don't know this, but they call
it the Origin of Species.
But that's the short title.
Speaker 1 (40:15):
Right, that's not the whole title.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
Yeah, go ahead and tell us the full title the
Origin of Species and theSurvival of a Preferred Racist
Darwinism.
Survival of a preferred racistDarwinism is, at its heart,
racist.
That's why the slave ownerswere able to latch on to it.
Because it is racist.
It teaches that that one raceis inferior to another.
Speaker 1 (40:38):
It teaches that and I think you know, as believers as
believers, you know, sometimeswe latch on to things that are
not biblical.
It's not, it's not a I'm nottrying to give slave owners a
pass.
But you know, as sinful peoplewe, sometimes we, we go down the
trail of false teachings anddon't.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
Yeah, and another thing that people don't realize
is that you know, not everywhite person was a slave owner
and every white person was aracist.
When the British governmentdecided to outlaw slavery, they
went full force, and what I meanby that is they used their
(41:17):
military and economic power toforce other nations into giving
up slavery.
They would actually board ships.
They would confiscate ships ifthey thought the ships were
involved in the slave trade.
They patrolled off the coast ofAfrica to prevent any ships
(41:39):
from trafficking in slaveryAfrica, to prevent any ships
from trafficking and slavery.
They lost thousands of livesand many ships for the
prevention of slavery.
That's the part we don't hearabout.
We just hear the white man isevil.
The white man, you know, wantsto put us in slavery and change.
Sin affects white people andblack people alike?
Speaker 1 (42:02):
Yeah, definitely so.
You can see that in Genesis 3,how the fall affected us all.
Yes, yeah, all right.
Well, thank you so much forgiving us your insight into how
to look at ethnicity biblicallyand how it contrasts to what
(42:24):
people call as a concept of race.
So our last question is how can, or what encouragement can, you
offer a believer who wants tolive faithfully for Christ?
Speaker 2 (42:37):
To understand that God loves you and he doesn't
care about the color of yourskin.
He loves black people as muchas he likes anybody else.
If we read the scriptures, wesee that I talked about the
Kushites.
Kushites were the people whowere very dark, like I say, from
Sudan, ethiopia.
When we read the Bible, we readthat they were actually
(43:00):
mentioned in favorable lightmany times.
They were considered warriors.
They were often mercenaries forother armies.
Because they were so good withthe bow, they were part of
David's army.
Because they were consideredsuch good warriors, god often
(43:20):
mentions them with favor BecauseGod sees us all as one.
In the Bible there is a unity.
God seeks to I mean man seeksto divide us.
God seeks to divide us.
I mean to cease to unite us.
When the Bible we see the Towerof Babel, when God separated
(43:44):
the nations, what do we have atPentecost?
We have people speaking intongues that everyone can
understand, because now God isuniting us.
At Pentecost there were peoplewho were speaking languages from
African nations and theyunderstood the gospel message
because God wanted them tounderstand that message too.
We see that unity messagethroughout the entire Bible and
(44:09):
I mentioned it before.
The Great Commission talksabout all nations.
We see heaven is filled withpeople from every nation, tribe
and tongue.
God values you as much as hevalues anyone else.
He loves you as much as heloves anyone else.
He likes to die for you like hedied for anyone else.
(44:34):
Yeah, that's the message.
Speaker 1 (44:37):
Well, amen to that.
Can't add anything to that, allright, well, amen to that.
Can't add anything to that, allright, well, as we wrap up,
where can people find you on allyour socials or in the internet
?
Speaker 2 (44:49):
giving an answerorg is my website.
I do havea youtube channel,also called giving an answer as
well, where I have a number ofshows up there, interviews that
I've done with people over theyears, and there are also
articles up there that peoplecan read, and also my book, the
African-American Guide to theBible, which is a book that
(45:11):
outlines a lot of what we talkedabout here today, a book of
good encouragement.
Speaker 1 (45:16):
All right.
Well, thank you so much forbeing on the show.
Thank you for having me.
Ideas can have a powerful impact.
They can influence how and whatwe believe, and as believers,
we should always use God's word,the Bible, as our guide for
what we believe and how we think.
And what we believe affects howwe act and react to our world
(45:40):
today.
You know history is a goodreference for how ideas have
evolved and have taken shape.
And as humans, you know we areprone to believing false ideas
because of our sinful natures.
You know we can be swayed if wedon't ground ourselves in the
(46:01):
word of God.
So I hope this episode washelpful and encourages you to
ground yourself in God's word,to know what he says and who we
are in him.
If you'd like to know moreabout Dr Felder, you can find
his contact in the show notes,and if you found this episode
helpful, please share it withyour family and friends.
Until next time, remember thatGod is always good and he's
(46:25):
always faithful.
Thank you for listening to thepodcast.
Do me a favor by following thepodcast and leaving a review to
help spread the word.
I look forward to hearing fromyou.
Welcome to Faithfully Living, the Podcast where we
learn how to live for Christ inour daily lives.
I am Dwan, your host, and Iwould like to invite you on a
journey with me to explore andlearn how to be a faithful
follower of Christ.
Hey everyone, welcome toFaithfully Living, the podcast,
(00:27):
where we strive to encourage youto live for Christ faithfully
by offering guidance on how tostudy the Bible, how to
understand the Bible better andhow to remain faithful to
historic Christianity in acontemporary society.
Genesis 1.27 tells us.
So God created man in his ownimage.
In the image of God, he createdhim Male and female.
(00:51):
He created them.
So, you know, as a people inthis world, we are image bearers
of God.
It's important to understandhow much care God gave to
creating humans.
We are valuable.
We should treat each other withrespect and dignity.
Yet, you know, sin has led usto mistreat our fellow man.
(01:12):
And it's also important tounderstand how the world was put
together and how history helpedus to know how people lived and
moved.
And it's vital to understand,as a believer, what we believe
as Christians and why.
In this episode I talk with DrHC Felder about is Christianity
(01:36):
a white man's religion?
But before we get started, letme tell you a little bit about
Dr Felder.
Dr Felder is a former atheistand NASA software engineer.
After becoming a believer andbeing exposed to the truth of
Christianity, he has dedicatedhis life to sharing that truth
with others.
He has an undergrad degree incomputer science and a master's
(01:59):
and doctorate in apologeticsfrom Southern Evangelical
Seminary.
His articles published inscholarly journals on the topic
of racism and the Bible.
He is the author of the AfricanAmerican Guide to the Bible,
which details, with theinspiration of scripture, the
(02:21):
black presence in the Bible, thebible and racism and the unity
of man.
Dr felder founded the givenanswer ministry, which focuses
on providing evidence for thechristian faith.
Dr felder also speaks atchurches and various apologetic
conferences around the country.
He resides in charlotte, northcar, carolina, with his wife and
(02:45):
four children.
All right, let's dive into thisepisode.
Well, hi, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Well, thank you for inviting me to the show.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
Well, thank you for inviting me, so I'm excited to
talk about our topic.
Is Christianity, a white man'sreligion?
Speaker 2 (03:12):
But before we get into our topic, can you tell us
a little bit about yourself?
Okay, sure, I was actually bornin a Christian family, but I
didn't consider myself much of aChristian.
I more considered myself maybea theist, because I went to
church every Sunday.
I believed there was a God.
I didn't know anything abouthim, definitely didn't know
(03:33):
anything about Jesus.
But when I joined the Navy, myfirst duty station was the
Philippines, and the first day Iwalked off that base and saw
all the beautiful women and sawall the bars, I knew that belief
in God was going to conflictwith the way I wanted to live my
(03:56):
life.
So I made a decision, rightthen and there, to no longer
believe in God, because I didn'twant to be held accountable to
no one outside of me.
I didn't want nobody telling mewhat to do, when to do it and
who to do it with.
So I said I'm not going tobelieve in God, and God, you
know, turned me on with thedesires of my flesh.
And I lived that way for thewhole time I was in the Navy,
(04:21):
for sure, sure, and even after Igot out the Navy, but um, but
there were times, though I gottaadmit that I did struggle with
my atheism when I was in theNavy, and that would be when I
would go out to sea and I wouldsee God's creation, I would see
the stars at night and I wouldknow that just no man made that
(04:41):
Pookie didn't make that.
That had to be something waybeyond us.
Yeah, so I would come back toshore and I would just have to
like double up on my atheism inorder to reinforce it, because I
could not let God in, becauseGod would just mess up my plan,
my plan, the plan that I had formy life, and I hated Christians
(05:09):
.
I hated everything aboutChristians because they
represented God and I didn'twant anything to do with God,
and I would often belittleChristians, I would belittle
their faith, because I would saythat there's no, you know, you
believed in this fairy tale, god, and because I had to, I had to
reinforce it for myself.
But I did meet a young lady oncethat my uncle introduced me to,
(05:31):
and she was actually the firstChristian I ever met in my life
that talked the talk and walkedthe walk, and just being with
her gave me some insight intowhat it means to be a Christian,
and one day she took me tochurch.
She invited me to go to churchand I remember it clearly
because it was on a Friday nightand I'm like who goes to church
on a Friday night?
You go to happy hour on aFriday night.
(05:52):
And something happened to me.
The Holy Spirit just worked onme and it just rose up in me and
I fought it off and I wastelling her about it on the way
home and she was like that's theHoly Spirit calling you and I
was like I actually believed it.
For some bizarre reason, Ibelieved it and I actually gave
(06:12):
my my my heart to the Lord.
But afterwards, after theeuphoria wore off, I was like
what did I do?
You know, I just made someemotional decision to believe in
this fairy tale, god, and so Istarted doing research to find
out if Christianity was reallytrue.
And that's when I found all theevidence for Christianity.
(06:35):
And I found that there wasevidence that the Bible was true
, that God did exist, and thatthe God did exist, corresponding
to the God of the Bible, jesusdid rise from the dead.
There was plenty of evidencefor it.
And so I was so surprised bythe information that I actually
decided to give my life toChrist and to focus on sharing
(06:58):
that information with others,and at the time I was an
engineer.
I was a software engineer atNASA and I actually quit my job,
sold my house and moved toCharlotte to study apologetics
under Dr Norman Geisler, andI've been into apologetics ever
since.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
Well, that's an amazing story, how you started
off knowing what was true as faras God being authority, and you
knew that you didn't want thatauthority in your life.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
so I knew enough to know, yeah, and if it was a God,
I would be held accountable tohim.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
I knew, I knew that much and then once you, you know
, you saw, I guess, the light orsaw who Jesus was, you, you
know, you actively sought himout, which is, and then him, I
completely gave my life to him.
That's an amazing story.
Thank you for sharing that.
(07:50):
Alright, so to get into ourtopic.
You know it's not uncommon forpeople to label Christianity as
like quote unquote the whiteman's religion.
But it kind of goes back tohaving the right perspective on
race and ethnicity.
(08:11):
So let's kind of start off asfar as like.
Why is it important tounderstand ethnicity from a
biblical perspective?
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Well, because a lot of people when they look at the
Bible, they believe that theBible is a book written by white
people for white people.
They don't even see blackpeople in it, they don't even
see people of color in it.
So then a lot of peopledisassociate themselves from it
because they say, well, that hasnothing for me, because that's
(08:44):
about white people and it's forwhite people, when it's really
not true at all.
I mean, god looks at us as allthe sons and daughters of Adam
and Eve.
All ethnicity come from thosetwo people to people, and their
genes was every color and huethat we see.
(09:08):
So when God looks at humanity,god looks at people as the
descendants of Adam and Eve, andas they developed and became
more numerous and migrated, theybecame ethnic groups, they
became nations and that's howGod dealt with people.
He dealt with people by nations, and God doesn't deal with
(09:31):
Black people and white people.
Race is not a biblical concept.
There's no such thing as racein the Bible.
If you look at the Bible andyou start looking at race, then
you've already gone wrong,because there's no such concept.
This concept came later on, butthere's no such thing in the
Bible as a concept as race,there's ethnicities, there are
nations, and that's the way thatGod sees people.
(09:53):
And God sees us all as beingmade in the image of him.
And I think this is soimportant because if black
people think that God does notlike them or that God views them
as second class citizens,people cannot view themselves
higher than they think that Godviews them.
So it's important that peopleunderstand that God views us all
(10:17):
.
He makes us all different kindsof colors, like he makes the
flowers different kinds ofcolors, like he makes the birds
different kinds of colors.
There is beauty in thatdiversity and that's what God
sees.
He sees the diversity andbeauty in that diversity because
he created it so you mentionedrace.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
You know, you said race is not in the bible.
So where did race, the conceptof race, come from then?
Speaker 2 (10:42):
race is a man-made idea.
It is a man-made construct.
It goes, we can.
We can trace it back to someswedish guy named carlos lennox
and in 1758 he actually wrote abook and he actually classified
people by their characteristicsand he called that race.
(11:06):
But he went further.
I mean, he talked aboutpersonalities like you know,
blacks being lazy and beingshifty and being, you know,
untrustworthy and all those typeof things.
So he was the first one to sortof come up with the whole idea
of race.
And it was actually.
It was actually Darwin,actually built upon what this
(11:28):
guy had actually done and whathappened was is that the slave
owners used that as evidence oras a reason to enslave Black
people, to say that they wereinferior, that they needed white
people.
But it's important tounderstand that slavery came
(11:51):
first.
The justification by race camelater, because slavery existed
long before this guy wrote thisbook in 1758.
But race was invented as a wayto justify slavery.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
That's interesting.
I knew slavery has been aroundfor thousands and thousands of
years, but I guess I didn'trealize the concept of race was
used as like a justification.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
Well, actually, you know I can touch on that a
little bit more when the firstBlacks came to America, they
came as indentured slaves,indentured servants, and they
were in the fields rightalongside indentured slaves.
I mean indentured servants fromother places, from Europe.
Indentured slaves, I meanindentured servants from other
(12:47):
places from Europe.
So you have the Irish workingright next to the African, right
next to the German.
But what happened was there wasa thing called the Bacon
Rebellion.
In the Bacon Rebellion peoplerose up, the service rose up
against the landowners, andafter that then the landowners
decided that they need a way.
(13:08):
They need a way to be able tokeep a class subservient, and
they came up with that was oneof the reasons behind race.
And so the people who wereIrish and who were German, these
people weren't considered white.
So they sort of made thelandowners say if you help us
(13:29):
keep the black people down, wewill.
Whites were only landowners.
If you help us keep the blacksdown, then we will give you
basically whitehood.
And so that's basically howwhite and black came about.
They were both invented, theywere both created.
They're both social constructs.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
Like a man-made construct.
Clearly a man-made construct soI guess for the for the next
few questions in light of that.
You know people have made suchclaims as like christianity's
races, does christianity supportum slavery?
(14:12):
Was christianity brought umover by to af Africa by white
missionaries?
So let's address each of thosequestions there.
So let's start off with isChristianity racist?
Speaker 2 (14:27):
No, I go back to saying you know Adam and Eve.
We all come from Adam and Eveand we are made in the same
image of God as Adam and Evewere.
Christianity was not racistwhen it was founded.
It's not racist today.
Pentecost when the church wasfounded, if you look in the
(14:50):
Bible you see that there werepeople from every nation, pretty
much well under the sun.
At Pentecost, that's when thechurch started 3,000 people from
every nation under the sun.
There were people there fromAfrica.
So the first converts, thefirst converts to Christianity,
the first church consisted ofAfricans.
So there were Africans andpeople of color from day one.
(15:12):
So we start there.
But another thing the firstGentile convert to Christianity
was the Ethiopian eunuch.
Right, yeah, god went out ofhis way to perform a miracle To
bring the Ethiopian eunuch intoknowledge about Christ.
(15:33):
Eunuch into knowledge aboutChrist.
That Ethiopian eunuch went backto Africa and told his queen,
candace, and Africa spread andChristianity spread throughout
Africa.
But not only that.
Let's look at what Jesus saidwhen Jesus was given the.
(15:55):
What is that called Matthew 28.
The commission, the greatcommission.
He said go into all the nations,make disciples of all nations.
He didn't say the white nations, he didn't say the black
nations.
(16:15):
He said all the nations and weknow that they did this Because
Christianity spread over theblack nations.
He said all the nations and weknow that they did this because
Christianity spread over thewhole world.
But then when we look at Johnthe Revelator, when he has a
picture of heaven, when he'slooking at heaven, he's seeing
people singing to the Lamb.
He's seeing people singing toGod, singing to Christ, and they
are people from every nation,language, tribe and tongue.
(16:39):
They are all there in heaven.
So it was never racist.
There are more Christians inAfrica today than there are in
the US, so it would be verydifficult to go to Africa and
try to convince them thatChristianity is racist when
there are more Christians there.
(17:01):
So it has never been a whiteman's religion.
It's never been racist.
That is.
I think.
What happens is that peoplehave this tunnel vision and
people.
I look at people, for instance,like Malcolm X and Elijah
Muhammad, and they looked atpeople who they saw, who were
(17:22):
their oppressors and they were.
They happened to be white andhappened to be Christian.
So they had this few view thatChristians and white equaled the
same thing.
But they had a very narrow viewof the world.
They had a very they had a verynarrow understanding.
They they relegated it to theirown personal experience, where
the world is a lot bigger thantheir personal experience right?
Speaker 1 (17:45):
yeah, definitely so.
I.
I think it's important to, likeyou said, have a wider
perspective than just your own.
Just your own narrow you.
You can't classify people intoone category if you don't know
the broader scope of who peopleare and what the Bible says
(18:06):
about.
Like you said, nations andethnicity, yeah, so I guess that
kind of transitions to doesChristianity support slavery?
Speaker 2 (18:21):
to?
Does the?
Does christianity supportslavery?
Now, this is always a hotbutton, a hot button issue.
Um, yeah, there's slavery inthe old testament, definitely
slavery in the old testament.
But before the old testamentthere was slavery.
Slavery had always existed.
Slavery existed before the Jews.
Slavery has existed in everysociety.
Slavery is all about a strongernation enslaving a weaker
(18:46):
nation.
In the Bible we see slavery.
We see slavery in the OldTestament.
But when we look at the OldTestament we see that God did
put boundaries around slavery,Like, for instance, after every
six or seven years they had tobe left free.
A lot of it had to do withpeople who were destitute, who
(19:10):
would actually sell themselvesinto slavery.
But there was actually slaveryalso where it was perpetual,
where God put a nation intoslavery as punishment.
When the children of Israelwent into the promised land, the
land of the Canaanites, Godsaid go to a city.
(19:33):
If they subject themselves toyou, then they become your
slaves.
If not, then destroy them,Because God was punishing those
nations.
But this has nothing to do withrace.
For some reason, people look atrace and say this has nothing
to do with race.
It has nothing to do with race.
There's this idea that the Jewswere white and everybody else
was black, and that's justsimply.
That's just simply not the case, because we see that the Jews
(19:55):
themselves went into slavery inBabylon.
And an interesting note Babylon, the descendants of Babylon,
come from Cush, which is thefounder of the African nations.
They also went into slavery inAssyria.
So it wasn't.
It had nothing, absolutelynothing to do with race.
(20:16):
But let me say this, and thisis going to sound really, really
weird Slavery was not even seenas a problem until Christianity
came along.
Slavery had always existed.
It existed in the Americasbefore the white man came.
(20:37):
Before the white man came,Native nations were enslaving
Native nations.
It happened everywhere InAfrica.
There's this idea that thesewhite people went to Africa and
that they captured these slaves,like we see on Roots, which was
completely false.
(20:58):
The fact of the matter is theAfricans were taking Africans as
slaves and was selling them tothe white man.
Slavery existed a long time inAfrica before the white man came
.
The white man didn't teachslavery to the Africans.
The Africans knew slavery very,very well.
As a matter of fact, Africans,the Africans, knew slavery very,
(21:23):
very well.
As a matter of fact, when theEuropeans tried to outlaw
slavery.
They rebelled.
They were like why in the worldwould we do that?
This is our culture, this iswhat we do.
This is what we've always doneIn America.
We hear, of course we hearabout the whites taking Africans
as slaves.
We don't hear about the factthat Native Americans had Black
(21:43):
slaves.
You ever heard of the Trail ofTears?
Speaker 1 (21:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
The Trail of Tears is when they relocated Native
Americans from one part of thecountry to another.
What they do not tell you isthat when they relocated these
Native Americans, they tooktheir slaves along with them.
Native Americans had slaves,just like the white people had
slaves.
Not only that, africans hadslaves as well.
(22:14):
In America there were Africanlandholders who had slaves.
As a matter of fact, Imentioned before about
indentured slavery.
The first example of perpetualslavery was a Black man going to
court to enslave his Blackslaves perpetually.
(22:36):
And then it was a Black man andhis slaves.
Then, once that happened, itopened up the floodgates and
then slavery became perpetual.
It wasn't seven years anymore,it became, you know,
never-ending.
So yes, slavery had alwaysexisted, but it's only one
(22:57):
culture where slavery was dealtwith and was made to be wrong,
and that is the Christianworldview.
That's about an abolitionistmovement.
The abolitionist movement tookhold of the idea that man is
(23:20):
made in the image of God andbecause of that idea the
abolitionist movement started.
And it's because of that idea,it is because of that movement
that we know that slavery iswrong, that slavery around the
world pretty much will stopbecause of that.
(23:40):
So not only did Christianitynot endorse slavery.
Christianity is responsible forthe abolition of slavery.
When we look at slavery aroundthe world, slavery only exists
in small pockets right now andthose are in Muslim nations.
Christianity pretty much wellwiped out slavery worldwide.
(24:04):
So, no, christianity does notsupport slavery.
Christianity was responsiblefor the abolition of slavery.
And when people say that slaveryis wrong, whether they know it
or not, they are borrowing froma Christian worldview, because
before that Christian worldview,before the abolitionist
movement, no one thought slaverywas wrong.
(24:26):
There was no reason to thinkslavery was wrong.
Atheists can't give you areason why slavery is wrong,
because we're not made in theimage of God, because you know
morality is, because you knowit's morality is whatever you
want it to be.
Islam cannot give you a realreason for why slavery is wrong.
Which is why when they tried,when the, when the British tried
(24:47):
to force other nations to giveup slavery and they went to the
Muslim, the Ottoman Empire, theyrebelled.
They were like what do you mean?
Slavery is wrong?
It's like them, like many otherpeople, like our culture is
built on slavery.
That is why there are certainpockets of slavery right now and
those pockets are run byMuslims and enslavering
(25:08):
Christians.
So the idea that Christianitysupports slavery is completely
backwards.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
It's all interesting that you're talking about, you
know, having to know, like, thehistory of how things got
started, yeah, which is totallyopposite of what the narrative
that we have.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
It is completely opposite of the narrative we
have.
Completely opposite of thenarrative.
And you know I'll give you anexample of that, and you know,
I'll give you an example of that.
So when I was growing up andwhen I was in high school, roots
came out and I saw Roots and itmade me angry, especially the
(25:52):
part where Kunta Kinte wascaptured by these white men that
just incest me.
Matter of fact, I was in the DCat the time and there were race
fights breaking out because ofthat, but now we know that it
was a lie Right.
(26:12):
First of all, roots was a bookthat was plagiarized by alex
haley.
He plagiarized a work offiction written by a white guy
oh, I didn't know that part yes,written by a white guy.
And alex haley admitted.
(26:33):
He said well, I was just tryingto give us you, give us morals
to live by.
He admitted that he plagiarizedit.
But not only that.
The Mendingo warriors that wehear all about in the Book of
Fruits actually were some of theworst slave traders in Africa.
They would go into CentralAfrica, captured slaves.
(26:59):
They were the ones thatcaptured the slaves and brought
them back to the coast and thensold them to the white people
who came were looking to buyslaves.
So the fact of the matter isthis is the opposite.
They were the actual slavers.
They weren't the victims ofslavery.
They probably were victims ofslavery too, because everybody
was a victim of slavery.
Right, whichever tribe wasstronger enslaved the weaker
tribe.
(27:19):
So it was going on back andforth.
And that's why, when I look, Iwent and did my ancestry and I
saw that I had, you know,relations all over Africa,
central Africa, the coast ofAfrica because they went into
Central Africa, took the slavesand brought them to the coast.
So, yeah, yeah, we have.
(27:42):
We've been told a lot.
That's not true.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
Well, I guess kind of segwaying piggyback on that.
Our last question would be wasChristianity really brought to
Africa by white missionaries?
And you kind of touched on thata little bit.
So tell us the history of you,told us a little bit of how
Christianity got into Africa,but could you elaborate on that
a little bit more?
Speaker 2 (28:05):
Yeah, I mentioned the Ethiopian eunuch who came back
to Ethiopia.
In the Bible Ethiopia is calledKush and that actually reflects
modern day Sudan, ethiopia,southern Egypt, the places where
(28:26):
the dark people are.
He came back to his queen.
She accepted Christianity andChristianity, flourished and, as
an interesting fact, ethiopiahas been Christian ever since.
Ethiopia is Christian to since,oh, ethiopia is Christian to
this very day.
But not only that.
(28:47):
Ethiopia was one of the fewplaces that were Christianized
without any influence from Rome.
They were Christian before theRoman Empire accepted
Christianity.
So Christianity continued tospread throughout Africa.
(29:11):
At the end of the third century,Northwest Africa was majority
Christian, northwest Africa wasmajority Christian.
By the third century, thatmeans the 200s, and by 200, like
280, there were churches inAfrica.
Now the Akosumite kingdom,which came from Ethiopia, which
(29:32):
came from Kush they just changednames over time became the
first Lubian kingdom to adoptChristianity as the official
religion in the fourth century.
This is the 300s.
Oh wow.
This is long before America wasdiscovered, early on, very
early on.
The African kingdoms of NabatiI can't pronounce some of these
(29:57):
names, but there were a numberof African nations that became
Christian around this same time.
Christianity was present all upand down the Nile River during
the 5th, 6th and 7th centuries,and they were Christians without
interruption until the Arabconquest Now, and this included
(30:17):
places like present-day Uganda,kenya.
All these places wereChristians until the Arab
conquest Now, when the Arabconquest came along, then some
of these places became Muslim,some of it through conquering,
some of it through just regulartrade.
(30:38):
And some of these nations didrevert back to their previous
religions or they adopted Islam.
And then, around the 1400s,there was another wave of
missionaries that did come fromEurope.
But what is interesting is thatthis wave of missionaries that
(31:02):
went there, they were basicallybringing the same Christianity,
because in Africa, africansactually exported Christianity
to Europe.
When the persecutions happened,a lot of the African Christians
went to Europe.
(31:23):
So that's how a lot of Europebecame Christianized.
And when Rome becameChristianized, they needed
scholars, they needed people whoknew Christianity, and they
would go to some of these placesin Africa Because Christianity
had been firmly established inAfrica.
(31:43):
So when these missionaries cameback to Africa, it was with the
same Christianity that theyoriginally exported to Europe in
the first place.
So it became sort of fullcircle.
So so originally, yes, africawas Christian before there was
(32:05):
even in America there was a law.
Then Christianity did come back.
But even when Christianity cameback, a lot of the nations did
evangelize other nations.
So Christianity spread withinAfrica, even from those
missionaries at that time theyactually spread it among other
(32:26):
nations.
So Christianity in Africa.
But at no point didChristianity disappear from
Africa, at no point.
There was always a Christianpresence in Africa, always a
Christian presence in Africa.
As I mentioned, ethiopian hasalways been Christian.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
Yeah, it's interesting how they got it
turned around.
Yeah, I think it was like yousaid it's a full circle.
It's a full circle.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
Some of the most famous theologians, christian
theologians, were African.
I mean, we look at Augustine,who was actually responsible for
Christianity as we know ittoday as far as doctrine.
I mean, when you go to seminary, a lot of the stuff that you
(33:19):
learn is built upon, uh, what,what augustine taught.
We look at athanasius, who was,uh, one of the early church
fathers.
I mean he was, he was, he waszealot, he was zealous for the
faith.
I mean, he was in some of thethe early church councils.
As a matter of fact, they havethe athanasius creed after him,
(33:39):
which he had implemented to orpretty much would develop, which
is today still used as a testfor orthodoxy in the Christian
church.
And we know he was African.
As a matter of fact, hisenemies used to call him the
black dwarf.
So, Africa and Christianity havea long, rich history together.
(34:04):
Unfortunately, when the RomanEmpire did take over, they did
start to influence Christianityin a way that you know it became
more.
We call it Hellenistic.
You know it became more.
(34:24):
What do we call it Hellenistic?
It lost a lot of its Africanroots, but Christianity in
Africa has gone way back, wayback to the very beginning.
Speaker 1 (34:36):
Yeah, Well, I'm glad you're correcting our
misinformation of history thatwe have learned and just kind of
segue into that.
You know how people getmisinformed and have a lot of
ideas that develop.
So what would be like somemisconceptions about
Christianity that, like blackpeople, the black community has
(35:01):
developed or had or has?
Speaker 2 (35:07):
Some of the things I've attested on already is that
Christianity is incompatiblewith people of color.
A few years ago, my wife for mybirthday.
We actually went on a trip toKenya and I was surprised when I
(35:30):
got to Kenya and saw all theChristians.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
And I asked our guide .
Speaker 2 (35:34):
I asked our tour guide I'm like what a couple of
all these churches is there aheavy Christian presence here?
He's like this is a Christiannation.
He says it's a mostly Christiannation and I did not realize
that and I started doing somemore research on it.
But there are more Christiansin Africa today than any other
(35:54):
continent.
We're talking about 630 millionChristians, which makes up 45%
of Africa, and 30 millionChristians, which makes up 45%
of Africa, and they'reestimating by 2050, it'll be 1.5
billion more than Latin Americaand Europe combined.
So these are some of themisconceptions that people have,
(36:17):
but another one is and this isa big one is that we have this
idea that these white slavetraders took Africans from their
native religion, brought themto America and forced them to
worship this Christian God.
The fact of the matter isremember I told you, a lot of
(36:40):
Africa was Christian.
A lot of those slaves who cameto Africa were already Christian
.
When they got to America, theywere already Christian.
In fact I will statistic here97,000 of the 388,000 slaves
(37:03):
that came to America came fromChristian nations in Africa.
That's 25%.
One in four slaves who came toAmerica from Africa came from a
Christian nation.
The Congo was big.
The Congo was big in the slavetrade.
But the Congo was also aChristian nation.
So this idea that they werestripped of their religion given
(37:28):
some foreign religion is justnot all the way accurate.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
I did not know that, that majority of slaves that
came over.
Speaker 2 (37:36):
Well, not the majority.
About a good number of themwere Christians.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
So what does the Bible tell us about how early
Christianity viewed ethnicidentity and diversity and you
touched on this a little bitabout?
We are all created in the imageof God, all created in the
image of God.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
Race is not a biblical concept.
The early Christian church wasvery diverse.
I mean, we read about it in thescriptures, we read it.
We could tell by some of thenames that they were very
ethnically diverse.
So there was no, there was,there was no black church or
white church.
The churches were very diverse.
Leadership in these churcheswere very diverse and there was
(38:25):
no such thing as an idea of racein the early church.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
There was ethnic identities, but it had nothing
to do with race understanding.
You know the historical contextof you know what the bible
tells us about christianity andhow it views who we are related
to god and then what this whathas history told us about how
christianity spread from africainto like europe and how it
(38:59):
started and those leaders thatwe look to.
Speaker 2 (39:04):
Like you said, augustus was one of the
prominent theologians that welook to as far as our Tertullian
was another one and he'sactually the one that coined the
phrase the Trinity he was anAfrican.
The first seminary was inAfrica.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
Oh, wow, I did not know that either.
You need to read my book, is it?
Is it important?
It's very important.
Yeah, I love history, but it'svery important to know, you know
, the history and origin ofthings.
Yeah, how things were, you know, passed on to to generation to
generation, and then you can seehow the misconceptions of
(39:45):
certain ideas developed, likeyou were talking about the I
forget what his name was thatcoined the concept of race.
Oh yeah, yeah.
Right.
And then Darwin picked up thatin his Origin of Species.
Speaker 2 (40:05):
Now, now, most people don't know this, but they call
it the Origin of Species.
But that's the short title.
Speaker 1 (40:15):
Right, that's not the whole title.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
Yeah, go ahead and tell us the full title the
Origin of Species and theSurvival of a Preferred Racist
Darwinism.
Survival of a preferred racistDarwinism is, at its heart,
racist.
That's why the slave ownerswere able to latch on to it.
Because it is racist.
It teaches that that one raceis inferior to another.
Speaker 1 (40:38):
It teaches that and I think you know, as believers as
believers, you know, sometimeswe latch on to things that are
not biblical.
It's not, it's not a I'm nottrying to give slave owners a
pass.
But you know, as sinful peoplewe, sometimes we, we go down the
trail of false teachings anddon't.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
Yeah, and another thing that people don't realize
is that you know, not everywhite person was a slave owner
and every white person was aracist.
When the British governmentdecided to outlaw slavery, they
went full force, and what I meanby that is they used their
(41:17):
military and economic power toforce other nations into giving
up slavery.
They would actually board ships.
They would confiscate ships ifthey thought the ships were
involved in the slave trade.
They patrolled off the coast ofAfrica to prevent any ships
(41:39):
from trafficking in slaveryAfrica, to prevent any ships
from trafficking and slavery.
They lost thousands of livesand many ships for the
prevention of slavery.
That's the part we don't hearabout.
We just hear the white man isevil.
The white man, you know, wantsto put us in slavery and change.
Sin affects white people andblack people alike?
Speaker 1 (42:02):
Yeah, definitely so.
You can see that in Genesis 3,how the fall affected us all.
Yes, yeah, all right.
Well, thank you so much forgiving us your insight into how
to look at ethnicity biblicallyand how it contrasts to what
(42:24):
people call as a concept of race.
So our last question is how can, or what encouragement can, you
offer a believer who wants tolive faithfully for Christ?
Speaker 2 (42:37):
To understand that God loves you and he doesn't
care about the color of yourskin.
He loves black people as muchas he likes anybody else.
If we read the scriptures, wesee that I talked about the
Kushites.
Kushites were the people whowere very dark, like I say, from
Sudan, ethiopia.
When we read the Bible, we readthat they were actually
(43:00):
mentioned in favorable lightmany times.
They were considered warriors.
They were often mercenaries forother armies.
Because they were so good withthe bow, they were part of
David's army.
Because they were consideredsuch good warriors, god often
(43:20):
mentions them with favor BecauseGod sees us all as one.
In the Bible there is a unity.
God seeks to I mean man seeksto divide us.
God seeks to divide us.
I mean to cease to unite us.
When the Bible we see the Towerof Babel, when God separated
(43:44):
the nations, what do we have atPentecost?
We have people speaking intongues that everyone can
understand, because now God isuniting us.
At Pentecost there were peoplewho were speaking languages from
African nations and theyunderstood the gospel message
because God wanted them tounderstand that message too.
We see that unity messagethroughout the entire Bible and
(44:09):
I mentioned it before.
The Great Commission talksabout all nations.
We see heaven is filled withpeople from every nation, tribe
and tongue.
God values you as much as hevalues anyone else.
He loves you as much as heloves anyone else.
He likes to die for you like hedied for anyone else.
(44:34):
Yeah, that's the message.
Speaker 1 (44:37):
Well, amen to that.
Can't add anything to that, allright, well, amen to that.
Can't add anything to that, allright, well, as we wrap up,
where can people find you on allyour socials or in the internet
?
Speaker 2 (44:49):
giving an answerorg is my website.
I do havea youtube channel,also called giving an answer as
well, where I have a number ofshows up there, interviews that
I've done with people over theyears, and there are also
articles up there that peoplecan read, and also my book, the
African-American Guide to theBible, which is a book that
(45:11):
outlines a lot of what we talkedabout here today, a book of
good encouragement.
Speaker 1 (45:16):
All right.
Well, thank you so much forbeing on the show.
Thank you for having me.
Ideas can have a powerful impact.
They can influence how and whatwe believe, and as believers,
we should always use God's word,the Bible, as our guide for
what we believe and how we think.
And what we believe affects howwe act and react to our world
(45:40):
today.
You know history is a goodreference for how ideas have
evolved and have taken shape.
And as humans, you know we areprone to believing false ideas
because of our sinful natures.
You know we can be swayed if wedon't ground ourselves in the
(46:01):
word of God.
So I hope this episode washelpful and encourages you to
ground yourself in God's word,to know what he says and who we
are in him.
If you'd like to know moreabout Dr Felder, you can find
his contact in the show notes,and if you found this episode
helpful, please share it withyour family and friends.
Until next time, remember thatGod is always good and he's
(46:25):
always faithful.
Thank you for listening to thepodcast.
Do me a favor by following thepodcast and leaving a review to
help spread the word.
I look forward to hearing fromyou.
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